Bake: The man for whom excellence is a habit

By Vicky Wandawa

HIS enthusiasm for excellence is simply contagious. “Making excellence your habit,” is the tagline of his company, World of Inspiration (U) Limited. Robert Bake Tumuhaise is an author, researcher, script writer and motivational speaker.

So far, Bake has had three books published, all on the path to success. His love for writing dates as far back as the tender age of 13, when he read Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.

“Chinua Achebe blends facts with fiction and spices the two up with rib-cracking humor. To think that the pieces of work were a result of imagination and creativity, inspired me into writing,” Bake recollects.
Impressed by his own creativity, Bake decided that he had found his niche and started writing short pieces.

Unfortunately, he was sent away from school following poor academic performance. “I was enrolled in a rural school deep in the village of Kisoro. I totally lost all confidence and my dream of writing died. I thought I would never make it,” Bake reminisces.

However, when the O’level results came out, he was top of Kisoro district. He joined university on government sponsorship to pursue a Bachelors Degree in Education.

“I rekindled my dream of writing at university. My brother had written a few pamphlets and was planning on publishing a book when he passed away. I felt like it was my place to take on writing.”

Bake started working on his manuscript in his second year at university and in 2005, published his first book, Let Your Kingdom Come. Two years later, he released Touching Heaven and a year after that, Keys To Opening The Doors of Success in Your Life.

Bake believes everyone can experience a breakthrough to success and wealth if they play their cards right.

He has three principles for success.
One, is that the journey begins with doing what God created you for. “Ask yourself what you enjoy doing most. Think of something you would do without being paid for it, something you easily do better than most people around you, something you always get compliments for,” Bake explains. “Once you have realised your calling, success sets in.”

Secondly, Bake talks of divine relocation. “Move from where you are to where you are meant to be. If you find yourself as an employee yet your calling is to run your own business, quit! If you are teaching yet your calling is to sing, go sing! Your success is where you are meant to be.”

His third principle to success is divine disobedience, which he derives from the law of euro dynamics. “I thought about the person who created a plane, he knew gravity always pulls things down but all the same went ahead and not only created, but flew a plane. Obviously, many must have discouraged him at the start of his project, saying he would fail, but he never lost focus.”

“In life, we also have circumstances that work against and people making statements like, ‘You were born in a poor family, or you will never succeed,’ but once we ignore such statements and focus on our goal, we will succeed!”

Bake believes that the leading cause of poverty in Uganda is embracing the wrong mindset. “There is the poverty/ failure mindset and the success/prosperity mindset. Unfortunately, most Ugandans have the former. They think its only start up capital that brings wealth and success, yet its ideas.”

Bake’s books front a relationship with God as the foundation of success. “Even the richest men, without a relationship with God, aren’t successful because being wholly successful means success in every aspect of one‘s life, including a relationship with God.”

Bake lives his life on a philosophy by Dr Martin Luther King: “If you can’t fly, run, if you can’t walk, crawl. By all means, keep moving.”

Bake believes that everyone can succeed and that‘s why, under his company World of Inspiration, he runs a forum where he invites successful motivational speakers.

From next week, Bake will be giving
advice on how to reach for success